


my manic and i

by ihopethatyouburn



Category: Homeland
Genre: Bipolar Disorder, F/M, Pre-Canon, carrie's second college boyfriend
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-10
Updated: 2020-09-10
Packaged: 2021-03-06 20:00:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,337
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26384530
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ihopethatyouburn/pseuds/ihopethatyouburn
Summary: It's Carrie's senior year of college, and she feels happy and settled and stable, until her brain chemistry decides otherwise.
Comments: 1
Kudos: 10





	my manic and i

**Author's Note:**

> Shout out to greenpen for letting me ramble at her about story ideas, fine-tuning some important details, and suggesting that Carrie’s boyfriend should parallel Jonas!
> 
> The title is taken from a song by Laura Marling.
> 
> Thanks as always for reading and leaving kind feedback!

November 2000, Princeton, New Jersey

Carrie hurries through the biting pre-winter wind towards her boyfriend Isaac’s off-campus apartment complex, pressing her hands to her face to thaw them as she enters the lobby. She lets herself into his unlocked apartment, where she can hear the radio coming from the kitchen.

“It’s fucking cold out,” she announces over the music, unwrapping her scarf from around her neck. 

“Hi to you too,” Isaac smiles as he kneads a ball of dough on the counter. 

Carrie goes to kiss him but he holds up his hands, protesting that he’s a mess. She settles for a quick peck on the cheek. 

“You smell nice,” she says as she pulls away, trying to identify the fruity scent. 

“I had to use your shampoo earlier,” he admits. “I forgot to buy more of my own.” 

She’d recently bought some travel-size shampoo and conditioner to leave in his shower, reasoning that the convenience of having it there would be so much greater than the worry about the message it might send, and she was right.

“What are we making tonight?” she asks as she leans against the kitchen counter. Isaac is an ambitious cook and lately he’s been fussing with various recipes for bread and pizza dough, adding qualifications before she tries something new with information about proof time or the maturity of his sourdough starter, which she’s learned to nod at before thoroughly enjoying whichever bread product it is that he’s not fully satisfied with. 

“Pizza again. I think I’ve finally perfected this dough, but I need your input.”

“I’m always glad to taste-test. And take home leftovers,” she adds pointedly. Her friends have learned that she’s likely to show up to their dorm common room with home-cooked food the morning after seeing Isaac, and they can’t stop talking about how great it must be to be dating a hot older guy. 

Carrie’s in her senior year of college and Isaac is only a few years older than her, getting a master’s degree in public policy, but there’s something about him that makes their relationship feel automatically more adult. Not more serious, since he’s moving to Nicaragua after he graduates in May to work for the local Amnesty International chapter, but like an actual exchange of opinions and ideas, more real than any of the other drunken connections she’s made at parties over the years. 

On the early September night they first met, Carrie told him about the columns she wrote for her high school newspaper about the genocide in Bosnia, published only because she scared the faculty advisor with her vehement insistence that her peers had to be aware of what was happening in the world around them. He laughed in friendly recognition and told her about the Gulf War protests he’d gone to with his uncle during his own early high school years, a drive to stop injustice instilled in them both at an early age. 

He also saw the way her eyes lit up when she talked about her semester abroad in Jordan, hungry to see and understand more of the world. He countered with his own stories about the year he spent in Mexico City after undergrad, working for a legal aid organization that made him want to go back to school so he could be more fluent in human rights policy.

He’d helped her with her Peace Corps application during the first month of their relationship, fine-tuning her personal statement and wondering aloud if her Arabic fluency gave her more of a competitive edge than his native Spanish would. He understands her particular combination of idealism and hubris, that the world needs change and she should be the one to create it, because he feels the same way. 

Now, Isaac rinses his hands and dries them with the dish towel sitting on the counter. He kisses her hello properly, one arm hooked around her lower back to pull her in close. They settle on the couch with wine she brought, her feet tucked into his lap. Isaac complains about the freshmen in the class he TAs, so demanding and uncompromising, and Carrie tells him about the Arabic Media class she just came from: mundane snippets of their days, in a way that’s both comfortable and eager. This is the first time Carrie truly feels like herself with a guy she’s seeing, to employ the more diplomatic term Maggie always uses, when usually it means _hooking up with._ She can take a deep breath here, in Isaac’s living room; he makes her feel calm.

And he’ll be gone in May, no matter what she does. She knows she’s supposed to be sad that he’s leaving, but if she were to think really hard about it, which she tries not to, that’s probably why she feels so calm. 

+++++

About a week later, Carrie lets herself into Isaac’s apartment again to find him on the couch watching TV. He mutes the evening news as she climbs onto the couch and lays down with her head in his lap.

“Hi,” he says, leaning his chin on her shoulder. “How was your day?”

“It was great, actually,” she responds. “Do you remember that man from the CIA I spoke with last month? Who got my name from Professor Sherman?”

Saul Berenson was on campus in October to recruit students, as he does every fall. Going into her senior year, Carrie had a clear plan to find a job doing international service work — anything that would allow her to travel. When the professor teaching her Human Rights seminar told her that his old friend from the CIA would be on campus and that she should meet with him, they’d be a good fit, she’d dismissed the idea at first. She thought a government position would be too bureaucratic, too small-minded, and all the negative press she’d seen about the CIA over the past few years kept running through her head. 

But she met with Saul anyway, if only because she didn’t want her professor to think she was blowing him off. Saul was a little short with her at first after a long day of meetings with other students, but he was clearly impressed with her Arabic and her French, and they found a rapport quickly. It was a bit of a surprise for Carrie, who usually had to wait for authority figures to warm to her. Saul asked her about her career goals, and she answered more honestly than she probably should have, mentioning the applications she had out to the Peace Corps and the Red Cross, emphasizing her languages and her desire for international travel.

Carrie was testing him a little bit, to see how he’d react to hearing that she hadn’t considered the CIA at all before that day; she didn’t expect him to smile and confess that he’d wanted almost exactly the same things when he was her age. From there, he launched into a description of the counterterrorism work he was doing, and Carrie could tell that this wasn’t the canned recruitment pitch that he’d given the students who came before her, listing particular areas where he thought she’d be a good fit.

She walked out of the appointment feeling like her future had just exploded, but in an energizing way. When she recounted the meeting to Isaac the next day, though, she held back a little, not wanting to oversell herself in case she’d misread the warmth in the room.

Now, telling Isaac about her follow-up, she continues, “I got a call from him today, telling me that he fast-tracked my application, and that I should pick a date for my in-person interview. It’s going to be an entire eight hours.” 

“Wait.” Isaac taps her to sit up so they can look at each other. “So you’re seriously considering this job? I thought you were just humoring your professor. I didn’t even know you sent in an application.” 

“I told you, I got along so easily with Saul when we met. I think I could work well with him.”

Isaac smiles slightly. He knows she doesn’t work well with most people. “I thought you wanted to focus on the Peace Corps though, or the Red Cross, where your work can actually change people’s lives. That’s what we discussed.” 

“I didn’t know I had to discuss all of my job applications with you before I send them,” Carrie says with an edge in her voice. Fine, she’d purposefully avoided telling Isaac about her CIA application because she knew he wouldn’t be thrilled, but his tone is a little too condescending. She’s telling him now, isn’t she?

“Of course you don’t.” His voice softens. “I’m just surprised that you decided to go the government route.” 

“I realized that the Peace Corps isn’t the best place for me if I want to use my Arabic. And I don’t know if I want the healthcare focus that most of the Red Cross jobs have. It’d be too much like following in Maggie’s footsteps.”

“And how did you realize that the Peace Corps isn’t a good place for you? Did this guy from the CIA tell you that?” 

“Yes, but he’s right,” Carrie says, feeling even more defensive now. “The only country they might send me to in the Middle East is Jordan, where I already lived for six months. I want to see more of the world, and Saul was telling me about the years he spent in Lebanon and Iraq. It’s a much broader scope.” 

“And did Saul tell you exactly what he was doing in Lebanon and Iraq?” Isaac asks pointedly. “What’s the position that he thinks you’re so perfect for?”

Carrie sighs loudly, exasperated. “Why don’t you just say what you mean?” 

“The CIA does a lot of shady shit under diplomatic cover.” 

“You think I don’t know that?”

“Why would you want to go work for them, then? They murdered my people in Nicaragua for a decade, funded by the US government. That’s what you’d be a part of.”

Carrie fights the urge to roll her eyes. “Your family hasn’t lived in Nicaragua since the 60s. You were born in Miami.”

“That still doesn’t change the fact that the CIA killed thousands of people. And that’s just one example in one country.”

“I wouldn’t be working for a Black Ops division like that! This position is for a case officer in counterterrorism. I would be developing individual sources on the ground. It’s not violent, and it could be really important.”

Isaac is not convinced.

“We both talk all the time about changing people’s lives for the better. In what world does improving national security not fit in that category?” she asks him.

“I just don’t understand why you would willingly be a part of a system that you know does horrible things all around the world, and doesn’t even own up to them.” 

Carrie’s chin starts to quiver. She cries when she’s frustrated, and even though she’s gotten it under control the past couple years, the reflex still sneaks up on her when she’s not expecting it to. She could swallow her tears down if she really wanted to, but she can see Isaac starting to soften finally, and she would rather use the emotion to her advantage. 

“Well, I just don’t understand why my boyfriend wouldn’t support me finding a mentor and a job that fits my skill set. It doesn’t help anyone to write off every single person in the CIA as evil. Saul thinks we can do a lot of good together, and I believe him.”

“Did you do the interview already without telling me, or something?” Isaac asks warily. “You’re talking with an awful lot of certainty.”

“Saul told me that it’s mostly a formality,” Carrie confesses. “He has enough pull that if he really wants me at the agency, I just have to do reasonably well during the interview and pass the background check.”

Isaac covers his face with his hand, like he does when he has to think hard about something. “So, what, did you accept an offer already? What are you trying to tell me?”

“I was trying to have a conversation with you about my future career. I knew you wouldn’t be thrilled about the CIA, but I didn’t think you were going to be so fucking judgemental.” Carrie stands up, her hands on her hips, her whole body tense.

“This is just a lot to think about. I wish you’d told me sooner. You know about all my immigration headaches trying to deal with my visa for next year, and I assumed you were telling me everything too.” 

Carrie feels deflated. “I was so excited about next year, and you just ruined it. I thought you would be happy for me.” 

Isaac is silent, his struggle to come up with an answer apparent on his face. 

“I can go, if this news is too much for you,” she says, her voice shaky with tears and disappointment. This is their first big disagreement, and she has no idea how he’ll react. 

Isaac reaches for her hand immediately. “Don’t leave,” he says. “I just need to process.”

Carrie wants to shake him for giving the cop-out non-answer Maggie always does when she gets big news. With her sister, she now knows to expect that reaction, but she’ll never understand it. 

“Okay,” she allows, using all her self-control. “I brought homework with me that I have to do, anyway.”

Isaac squeezes her hand as she gets up to grab her backpack. She takes her books into his room for some privacy and tries to concentrate on her reading for class in the morning.

An hour later, he knocks on the door frame. “Are you in the middle of something?” he asks, his voice soft like it is on the phone when he’s trying to get his mom to calm down about something, sticking his head in the open door. 

“Nope,” she says. “Come on in.” 

He sits on the bed next to her crossed legs. “I’m sorry,” he says simply. “I shouldn’t have been so quick to judge.” He kisses her softly, his lips barely touching hers, making her sigh as he pulls away. 

She cups a hand around his chin. “You were just being honest. I’m glad you did.” They still don’t see eye to eye, and probably never will, but they can move past the disagreement.

He takes her hand from his face and threads his fingers through hers, moving her book and assorted post-it notes to the nightstand. He trails kisses up her arm: her wrist, the freckles on her forearm, the inside of her elbow where he knows she’s sensitive, and finally returns to her mouth, with more urgency this time. She tips him back onto the mattress and starts to unbutton his jeans, her way of saying he doesn’t have to do penance. 

Once their clothes are on the floor, she lowers herself onto him, leaning down to kiss him messily as their hips find a rhythm, wound up from the stress of the argument.

He waits only until her toes uncurl from her first orgasm to find her clit again and ease her into another one, smiling as she moans softly into his neck. She bites his shoulder as she comes and he tastes like salt, overeager, another apology.

“It’s okay,” she whispers to him. “I swear I’m not mad.” 

He nods, looking relieved. He comes soon after, and they lie quietly together on top of his quilt, their sweaty limbs sticking together, but neither of them want to be the first one to move. 

+++++

Carrie is packing hurriedly as she waits for Maggie to pick her up to drive home for Thanksgiving break, behind schedule because she got caught up in the reading she was doing. As planned, Maggie calls her dorm room landline at 4pm from a campus pay phone to let her know that she’s arrived, but Carrie realizes as she’s shoving things into her backpack that she’s missing a book she absolutely needs for the assignment she has to finish over the weekend. 

“Hi,” she answers the phone distractedly. “Sorry, I’m —”

“You’re running late?” Maggie finishes for her. 

“Yes,” Carrie rolls her eyes. “I left a book I need over at Isaac’s apartment. Can you drive me by there before we leave?”

Maggie sighs. “Only if this means I finally get to meet him.”

“I wasn’t keeping him from you! It’s only been a couple months, and you’ve only been to campus once since the semester started, like a week after we started dating.” The sisters try to see each other once a month, since Maggie is in med school at UPenn and only an hour away from Princeton. In October, Carrie went down to Philly to spend her fall break with Maggie, so it’s not like she ever had an opportunity to meet Isaac that Carrie avoided.

“So that means I can meet him?” 

“If he’s home, but just a quick hello. That’s it.” Maggie is very good at small talk — it’s because she’s a people-pleaser — and has been known to turn a passing greeting with an acquaintance into a thirty-minute conversation. 

“That’s good enough for me,” Maggie responds happily. “I’m parked in the faculty lot right outside your building. I have to go back to my car so I don’t get a ticket, but don’t take too long.”

“See you in five minutes.” Carrie hangs up and immediately calls Isaac to make sure he hasn’t left yet for his aunt’s house in New York City, which he hasn’t, and lets him know she needs to swing by to get her book. She does a half-hearted final check to make sure she has all the essentials, knowing she can steal from Maggie anything she forgot to pack, and hurries downstairs. 

She throws her suitcase in the trunk and greets Maggie with a hug across the center console. “Hi!” she says brightly, settling into her seat. 

“Happy early Thanksgiving,” Maggie responds, always one to force holiday cheer even when they’re just headed to Virginia to eat sad mashed potatoes and pre-cooked turkey legs with their dad. Carrie can’t understand why Maggie doesn’t just go to Bill’s family’s Thanksgiving; a celebration with the future in-laws is a perfect excuse to avoid the depressing day they’re headed towards. 

“Same to you.” 

“So are we going to pick up your book?” Maggie asks with a smile on her face. 

“Yes, but only because I can’t work on this assignment without it,” Carrie says reluctantly. She’s not actively dreading Maggie meeting Isaac, but things have been going so well the past couple months that she sees no reason to add more pressure of any kind, even if it’s just a drive-by hello from her not-at-all-threatening sister. 

“That’s the attitude I like to hear!”

Carrie directs Maggie off campus to Isaac’s grad student apartment complex.

“He said he’d have it ready for me,” Carrie explains, gripping the door handle as they pull over, not sure if she should let Maggie come upstairs, or what. She’s saved from that calculation, though, when she sees Isaac open his front door holding her book, evidently having waited in the lobby until he spotted Carrie in the car. He waves to signal that he sees them and walks up to the car wearing his winter coat, showing he’s ready for a full conversation. 

Carrie rolls down the window, not sure if she should get out or not. 

“Thanks for bringing this down for me,” she starts awkwardly, taking the book from him. “We were going to come up to the apartment.” 

“I wanted to make sure I got a chance to meet Maggie,” he responds, extending his hand through the window, eager and cute. “I’ve heard a lot about you.”

“All good things, I hope,” Maggie smiles as she shakes his hand. “This one’s told me a lot about you, too.”

“Some good things, some bad things,” Carrie mumbles, hating the feeling that she’s outflanked. 

Their insistence that she’s been orchestrating things so Maggie and Isaac don’t meet is so much worse than any conversation that could ensue. She didn’t want to weigh down her easy relationship with an awkward restaurant dinner and questions from her sister about how serious they are, especially when Isaac is going to be gone come summer because of work. She didn’t want to worry about Maggie liking him, or vice versa. There’s no reason to overcomplicate anything, except here Maggie is, overcomplicating everything as usual.

It’s helpful that they know the basic facts about each other already, and Maggie and Isaac hit it off as well as possible in the strange setting. Isaac is leaning his forearms on the open window on Carrie’s side, asking Maggie about the patients she’s been working with at UPenn’s free clinic and moaning about all the underinsured people who can’t get medical care any other way. Carrie touches his arm lightly as Maggie launches into a long story about the tests she had to deny a patient earlier in the month, trying to communicate _Hey, you asked._ He doesn’t seem fazed, though. 

Maggie asks Isaac about his classes, and gets the elevator pitch about his master’s thesis on the influence of advocacy groups in Central American policy interventions as a response to human rights violations.

Maggie keeps looking between Carrie and Isaac with a grin on her face. “Why are you smiling so much?” Carrie asks, wishing she didn’t feel so defensive. 

“I just think you two are a good match.” 

Isaac looks proud at this pronouncement. “I’m glad we have official approval,” he jokes. “It’s important to court the sister vote.” 

“Well, this was fun, but we’d better get on the road.” Carrie hates letting nice moments sit for too long. “Dad’s expecting us for dinner, isn’t he?” 

Maggie nods reluctantly. “It was nice to meet you,” she says to Isaac. “Maybe we can do this again, but indoors.” 

Isaac laughs, genuinely. 

“I never asked you to come out here,” Carrie reminds Isaac. “I told you I’d come up.” 

“I know. Just humor me, please?”

“Okay,” she allows. 

He kisses her goodbye through the window. “Happy Thanksgiving.”

“See you when we get back.” Carrie still feels a little thrill at tiny intimacies like this: the plans for the future, no matter how small, and the tacit assumption that yes, of course they’ll want to see each other when they’re back on campus. For most couples that might be a given, but for Carrie it’s a new feeling. Last year, when she moved into her dorm in August, it didn’t occur to her to call her now ex-boyfriend James for a solid day and a half. She was getting her room organized and picking her classes and hanging out with friends she hadn’t seen all summer, and they only saw each other because he came to find her. 

Isaac stands on the curb waving as Maggie pulls out of her parking spot. She locates a Mapquest printout in the center cup holder and shoves it at Carrie. 

“I need you to navigate for me,” she commands. 

Carrie groans. “Fine.”

Carrie stays quiet as they pull onto the highway, feeling a little unsettled but glad that both Maggie and Isaac like each other. 

“I think that went well,” Maggie says. “I don’t know why you were being so weird.”

“I think it did too,” Carrie agrees, sidestepping her sister’s second comment. 

“I can tell you really like this guy, and it’s not hard to see why.”

“Yeah. He does have really nice hair.” 

“I meant that he’s smart and passionate and cares about you. And yes, he’s also really hot. Even in a winter coat.” 

“Maggie!” Carrie mock-scolds. “You’re a married woman. I can’t believe you’d call another man hot like that.”

“Shut up. I have eyes, is all I meant. I’m just glad you found him.”

“I am too.” 

“I can hear a _but_ coming,” Maggie says as she changes lanes. 

“We both know that it can’t last. He’s leaving the country after he graduates this spring. Don’t get your hopes up.” Ever since Maggie got married in July, she’s been extra invested in Carrie’s love life, which is both sweet and very annoying. 

“My hopes aren’t up about anything. I just think he brings out something special in you.”

“Maggie, you saw us together for a total of fifteen minutes, and you did the talking for ten of those minutes. We’re just having fun, and we’re both okay with that.”

“God, I never thought I’d be having an argument with you because I like your boyfriend.” 

“We’re not arguing! I just don’t think there’s anything to talk about, and I want to move on now.” Carrie leans her head against the window, pissed that she’s stuck in the car with her sister for the next three hours. She gets antsy if she thinks too much about the future. She felt such a strong wave of relief on the day Isaac told her that he accepted the Amnesty International job offer, about a month into their relationship, that she almost wanted to laugh at her stroke of good luck. 

Last year, she spent most of her fall semester figuring out clever ways to dodge her ex James’ attempts at further commitment, like offering to visit her in Virginia over winter break before she flew out to Jordan for her semester abroad, but now, she doesn’t have to spend any energy balancing out her relationship. She never feels a step behind. She’s happy with Isaac for now, happier than she’s ever been, if she’s honest, and that’s more than enough for the both of them. She doesn’t need Maggie or anyone else to give a seal of approval.

+++++

Finals sneak up quickly, and the end of the semester is a whirlwind. Carrie is offered and accepts a job on Saul Berenson’s team at the CIA during the second to last week of classes, and her sleep schedule goes haywire as she tries to finish all her assignments, fueled by bad dining hall coffee and her friend’s Adderall prescription. She still sleeps at Isaac’s apartment a few nights a week, but it feels like all they do together is sleep, maybe pausing in the mornings to eat breakfast together as they retreat individually to the library or a coffee shop to get work done. She starts to lose track of the days once reading period starts and the library is open 24/7, only remembering to eat when she sees students carrying to-go containers from the dining hall past her study carrel. 

She knows she should feel lethargic from the lack of sleep and diet of granola bars and potato chips from the creepy vending machine in the library basement, but she feels unstoppable, actually, her energy building with each hour she’s awake past midnight, color-coding the post-it note paper outline stuck to the wall of her carrel, eventually expanding to the one next to hers. That move gets her a lot of glares from people walking by looking for a space to sit; finals are coming up, after all, but she continues to commandeer her two desks, daring someone to say something to her directly. 

In past years, she’s had more tethering her to reality during these free-for-all weeks, having to answer to her roommates or Maggie or James, at least at night. But Maggie just found out that she’s pregnant, called Carrie in happy tears two weeks ago, so she has bigger things to worry about than how much sleep Carrie is getting, for which she’s grateful. And she’s been splitting her time at Isaac’s and in her own dorm so that Isaac and her friends must assume she’s at the other location, not sitting in the back corner of the library in the dead of the night, blasting music on her Walkman and writing furiously. 

It’s the Adderall, probably, but she’s getting inspiration from the strangest places, suddenly recalling readings from classes she took freshman year and news stories from early high school and applying them to her final paper for her Human Rights seminar.

One night — or technically one morning, since it’s half-past three — she finds herself deep in the reference stacks, looking for an obscure book about jazz history that she needs for a new project she just came up with that was so important, so revolutionary, in fact, she had to set aside her actual finals to work on it. There are so many books on jazz that she’s spent almost four years ignoring, about history, about theory, about composers, information she wishes she could just absorb, inhale, inject, fill her head with nothing but tempo and rhythm.

She devours the history book and the two that were on the shelf next to it, filling an entire legal pad with notes. Most of them are about improvisation, about musicians jumping from note to note as soon as the thought entered their heads, finding the structure as they went, which sounds very appealing to her, she who has always resisted rules and expectations. She feels a kinship with those musicians, such a strong connection across decades, sitting in the library as the sun rises, that she thinks she could, in fact, have invented jazz herself, in another life, in another body, but with the same brain, she’d be willing to stake her life on that. 

So the only logical thing left to do is to write all that down, a manifesto, she’d call it, so that everyone can understand the impact she’s had. When she’s done, her fingers cramping from typing so much, she leaves the library for the first time in she’s not sure how long, and heads for the music department. She goes to a fancy school with fancy professors who know fancy people; any of the faculty would jump at the chance to read her writing, freshly printed and held together with the biggest binder clip she’s ever seen. 

But the professor she meets isn’t interested at all; at first she doesn’t understand what he’s saying, has to ask him to repeat himself, but eventually she gathers that he’s worried about her. She tries to assure him that she just had the biggest breakthrough of her life, that she’s written something she’s sure he’ll want to read if he just takes it from her hands that are shaking with excitement, but he’s getting up from his desk instead, and taking her by the arm and steering her out the door to health services.

The nurse at health services is concerned too, but unimpressed, like she’s seen worse, which she probably has. She whispers something to the medical assistant about a meltdown, a word that Carrie doesn’t like at all, a word that implies a lack of control, when she was clear-headed enough to put together the 45 pages she tried to give to the music professor in just a day or two, which means that her thoughts are as clear as they’ve ever been in her life. The sterile white exam room gives her pause, though, and she’s glad the rushed family history questions don’t quite arrive at her father and his condition, which Carrie doesn’t think is relevant right now but the nurse might.

She’s able to convince the nurse that she’s just wired from a bad combination of Adderall and caffeine, and she finally gets released after several strong lectures about misuse of prescription medication. 

She drags herself to her dorm room, suddenly exhausted, wanting nothing more than to collapse. She sees the voicemail button blinking on her phone and hits play as she takes off her shoes and pants and crawls into bed. 

“Hey, Carrie,” Isaac’s voice comes from the answering machine. “It’s Wednesday, and I know we’re both really busy right now, but I haven’t heard from you since Saturday night, so I just wanted to check in. Call me when you get this.”

Fuck. Has it really been four days since they had dinner together? Carrie remembers leaving his apartment for the library like it was yesterday. She definitely slept in her own bed that night, but after that the days start to blur together. She rubs her eyes, overwhelmed. The nurse at health services had asked her what day of the week it was and she was saved by the fact that it was listed on the sign-in sheet, Wednesday, December 13. Otherwise, she’d have had no idea what to say. 

Maggie’s voice fills the room as the next message starts playing, from yesterday morning, but Carrie hits stop, leaving the message listed as new. Isaac sounded upset, but she can’t deal with calling him back right now. She needs to sleep. She’ll do it after she wakes up.

She finally makes it home to Virginia a few days later, having turned in all her final papers at whatever stage of completeness they were before she was sent to health services, most of which were in good shape. She couldn’t concentrate on her schoolwork, which suddenly seemed immaterial, unimportant, inconsequential to the rest of her life. Her dad keeps asking her if she’s okay, keeps watching her with a knowing look in his eye, but he just doesn’t understand that she has work to do, she’s going to be in the CIA, after all, and she can’t believe all the history she doesn’t know about, all the threats made on US soil, and she starts doing her own research, making a timeline, a cheat sheet for herself. 

Maggie comes home too, eventually, and Carrie is pretty sure she remembers hugging her newly pregnant sister hello, and saying congrats and squealing like she’s supposed to, but her memory is a little hazy. Though she doesn’t quite recall their initial greeting, their first conversation is a slap to the face that she’ll never forget. 

“What happened at the end of the semester?” Maggie asks, gentle at first. “You went MIA for a little while there.”

“I don’t know what that’s supposed to mean. Nothing happened, I was just busy, like everyone is during finals.” 

“Dad says you came home before you were supposed to, and then you shut yourself in your room, and you won’t come out or eat anything he makes for you.”

“Dad’s a shitty cook. You know that. And I don’t have time to pretend that he’s not.”

“Why don’t you have time?” Maggie pinches the skin between her eyebrows. 

“I told Dad, and he should have told you, that I can’t possibly start working in counterterrorism if I don’t know all the background there is to know, even if I stick to specific regions it’s still so overwhelming —”

“Carrie.” Maggie raises her voice as she interrupts. “Dad made me drive home early, too, because he’s worried about you, and you won’t listen to anything he says.”

Carrie scoffs. “He doesn’t have to worry about me.”

“I’ve never seen you quite like this, but do you know who you remind me of?” 

Carrie turns to look Maggie in the eye, and she knows what’s coming before her sister even opens her mouth; it’s something that’s been happening lately, she can anticipate people’s responses before they give them, and she’s almost always right. 

“Don’t you fucking dare. You’ve been saying this shit for years, and it’s never amounted to anything.”

“Say it out loud, then,” Maggie challenges. “Who do you remind me of, and why am I wrong?”

Carrie balls her hands into fists in frustration. “This is nothing like Dad when he’s manic.”

“I see a lack of sleep, increased energy, racing thoughts,” Maggie rattles off from the fucking DSM entry that must be in her head. “Do I need to go on? Because I can.”

“I’m working! I’m not bothering anyone! Dad didn’t need to drag you home almost a week before Christmas just for this.” 

Maggie looks at her strangely. “It’s December 23rd.”

“No, it’s not.” Carrie feels woozy all of a sudden, and she sits down on her bed, on top of the photocopied articles she’d painstakingly organized. The edges of her vision start to blur until it goes black entirely.

She doesn’t know how much later she wakes up, but she’s laying down and Maggie is sitting above her. “We need to go to the hospital,” Maggie says firmly. “You’re dehydrated, and it sounds like you haven’t eaten in days. You need fluids.”

Carrie tries to protest, but Maggie isn’t having any of it, dragging Carrie down the stairs and into their dad’s waiting car with superhuman pregnant lady strength.

At the hospital, she does get the IVs Maggie wanted, but the nurse keeps telling them to stay put and wait for the doctor, as if she would get up and leave with a needle in her arm, so insistent that Carrie starts to get truly nervous for the first time. She makes her dad go sit in the waiting room, knowing Maggie would have to be physically dragged out by her hair, but there are too many people crowded around her and she can’t breathe properly. 

When the doctor arrives, she asks all the questions about Carrie’s family mental health history that the nurse at health services skipped over, and she has to admit under Maggie’s unforgiving stare that yes, their father has been diagnosed with bipolar disorder, and yes, perhaps she at times exhibits similar behaviors, but no, she’s never been assessed by a psychiatrist. When the doctor says she wants to admit Carrie for a few days for a formal psych evaluation, Carrie whirls around to glare at Maggie.

“This is what you wanted, isn’t it?” she hisses. 

“I swear to God, I didn’t bring you here thinking they would want to admit you,” Maggie insists. 

“But you knew it was a possibility!”

Maggie gets very quiet. “I guess so. But I wasn’t trying to trap you. I need you to know that.”

Carrie doesn’t answer, curling into a ball on the bed, not caring that her shoes track dirt on the sheets.

“I think you should do the evaluation,” Maggie urges. “I’ve been so worried about you.”

“Or what, you’ll commit me against my will?”

Maggie looks apologetically at the doctor, who’s still standing in the little curtain-cubicle with them. “I don’t think we should be having this fight in front of —”

“I really don’t give a fuck what this lady thinks about me!”

Maggie clasps her hands together, her knuckles turning white. “Carrie, you lost days of your life to whatever project you were working on. That’s not normal.”

After a lot more arguing, and tears from Maggie, Carrie finally consents. What finally convinces her is when her father comes to check in and gets misty-eyed. 

“You probably think I called Maggie to avoid taking you here myself. And that’s true,” he admits. “But that’s because it hurts me to see you like this. It makes me remember how exhilarating the high of mania can be, just me against the world, and it’s hard to keep myself in check. It’s like I’m an addict, and I needed Maggie here to balance us out.”

Somehow hearing that her dad also recognizes her behavior as manic makes her finally acquiesce. She reaches out for the clipboard of paperwork from the ER doctor and gets a talk about what a 72-hour hold means and what she can expect, none of which she listens to, a buzzing noise in her ears growing louder like cicadas in the summertime, long dormant but threatening to wreak havoc at any moment.

So she’s admitted, and immediately pumped full of sedatives, and she sleeps, she has no idea for how long. She talks to a lot of different doctors and she’s eventually diagnosed with bipolar I, the same as her father, and prescribed clonazepam “as needed.” The head psychiatrist tells her things she already knows about lithium, that it’s often used as a mood stabilizer, but doesn’t prescribe it “yet,” saying that he wants to monitor her cycling closely first, since this is her first true manic episode. She makes a follow-up appointment with a private practice psychiatrist during her spring break, required before her release is approved. 

Maggie comes to pick her up bright and early the day after Christmas. Her sister doesn’t bitch about the ruined holiday or ask too many questions, accepts the prescriptions and condescending behavioral change pamphlets she’s holding as an explanation, gentle for now. 

“You should call Isaac sometime today,” Maggie says as she pulls into their driveway. “He left a message for you yesterday. I don’t want him to think you disappeared on him.” 

Carrie just stares out the window. The sedatives are still flushing out of her system, which for her means she can identify emotions without actually feeling them. Right now, she wants to cry.

“Okay,” she mumbles. “I’ll do it later.”

She does call Isaac that afternoon, at his parents’ house in Florida.

“Carrie?” he asks as he comes to the phone, sounding relieved. “I was starting to get concerned.”

“Sorry I missed you yesterday.” Her voice sounds unnaturally perky; she hopes he doesn’t notice. “We decided to do Christmas with Maggie’s husband’s family last-minute, so we weren’t home. Merry Christmas, though, one day late.” 

He’s appeased with this explanation and launches into stories about his family’s huge annual holiday gathering, spanning both Christmas Eve and Day. He does most of the talking and she feels comforted just sitting there listening to him detail all the normal things he’s done in the past three days, an assurance that the world kept turning while she was locked in that room with only a mattress and a cage on the window.

When she hangs up, she finally does cry, out of loneliness and embarrassment and relief. The thing she’d been dreading for most of her life — a breakdown, a diagnosis — has happened, and her life hasn’t fallen apart completely.

+++++

Carrie returns to campus at the first acceptable moment after winter break ends, taking the train so she doesn’t have to sit in the car with her dad for hours, the Amtrak to SEPTA to NJ Transit transfers worth it to be finally free of constant watchful eyes. She goes right to Isaac’s apartment from the train station, still dragging her suitcase behind her. 

“I missed you,” she says as she hugs him tightly. 

That night, she’s insatiable, invites him to join her on the bed with a playful grin and splayed legs. He takes her clothes off painfully slowly, one item at a time, kissing her everywhere.

“I missed you,” she repeats as he kicks off his own sweatpants, already hard. He has tan lines from his month in Miami.

“You missed me, or missed this?”

“Both,” she says. He kisses lazily down from her breasts to her navel to her center, makes her shiver as he leaves a bite mark on her thigh. “Definitely both.”

She groans as he presses into her, her nails digging into his shoulders, adjusting her hips to get a better angle. Every nerve ending is on fire as he thrusts deeper into her, and she just concentrates on the warmth building in her stomach, whispering nonsense in his ear as she climaxes, _keep doing that, stay right there, never stop, oh God, oh fuck,_ and her vision goes white for a moment in pure pleasure.

After their first round he goes to take a shower and she climbs in with him, running her hands teasingly down his body until he pins her to the cool tile wall, his fingers deep inside her, making her come so hard her legs almost give out underneath her.

“Is that what you want?” he asks, his voice low.

She nods, not ready to speak yet, still breathing heavily. This was exactly what she wanted: to stop thinking.

She finally falls asleep with Isaac rubbing her back, spent but happy. She almost feels like she’s back to normal.

She goes back to her dorm the next morning to get organized for the semester that starts in a few days, abandoning her suitcase in the corner of her room. Instead of unpacking, she takes a halfhearted look at the books she’s supposed to buy and the overly ambitious schedule for completing her thesis that she’d put together back in November. 

That evening, she drifts back to Isaac’s for dinner, knowing he’ll cook her something delicious without her having to ask. He’s working on his own thesis when she walks in the door, books and papers strewn across his coffee table, but he gets up immediately to say hello, which maybe should have made her nervous but in the moment is just a welcome greeting. 

“I was hoping you’d come by again today,” he says. “You left something in my room this morning.” 

He’s acting strange, looking at her with eyes that are too gentle, and she has no idea what he’s talking about. She didn’t touch her suitcase last night other than to dig out an old sweatshirt, so she doesn’t know what she could have forgotten. 

He disappears for a moment into his room and returns with a white paper Walgreens bag. Her breath catches in her throat and she doesn’t need to open it to know that inside is the bottle of clonazepam that Maggie drove to the pharmacy to pick up, both as a nice gesture and also because she wasn’t sure Carrie would do it herself. Carrie had thrown it carelessly into her suitcase on top of her clothes; it must have fallen out while she was rearranging things.

“I looked inside to see if it was something important that you needed right away,” he explains. 

“Um, no, it’s not,” Carrie says brilliantly. “You don’t need to worry about it.”

Her heart starts beating faster, and she smells a combination of antiseptic and powdered rubber gloves, the psych ward lodged in her sense-memory. She digs her nails into her palm to stop herself from crying, which works to prevent tears, but she’s pretty sure Isaac noticed her visible inhale of pain. She’d planned on telling him about her diagnosis eventually, probably, but she hadn’t decided how to do it, and she really didn’t expect to be surprised like this. 

“The name sounded serious, so I looked it up,” Isaac continues. “And I saw that it’s a pretty heavy-duty tranquilizer.” 

Carrie knows she would be within her rights to get mad here, yell at him for an invasion of her privacy, but she doesn’t have the energy, and she believes that he truly was just concerned. She sinks down onto the living room couch and closes her eyes for a moment, trying to make a split-second decision about how much to tell him. 

As of right now, Maggie and her father are the only two people in her life who know that she’s bipolar, with an official sign-off from a psych ward doctor and the hospital bills to prove it. She couldn’t sleep the first few nights after she got back from the hospital, swearing she could hear Maggie pacing outside her door. She felt like a burden every time Maggie came into her room to see how she was doing, to read from the list of behavioral changes the doctor recommended, a normal sleep schedule and regular exercise and a balanced diet, all things Carrie can’t imagine will be helpful but that she’s trying anyway so she can say that she did. When Maggie left after New Year’s to go back to Philly, she still called multiple times a day, and Carrie always hung up the phone feeling heavier than she did when she picked it up. 

Carrie knew this was just Maggie’s way of taking care of her, and she didn’t really protest because she couldn’t find the words to explain herself. Even so, every phone call just served to remind her of how badly her brain was broken, that she couldn’t even be trusted to put herself to bed at 10pm. 

Her dad’s reaction was harder to parse, seemingly a mixture of relief that he’s not alone and concern because he knows the full, unfiltered truth about what is now _their_ illness. He stayed mostly quiet, though, and let Maggie do the parenting, as he had many times in the past.

So now, after weeks of Maggie checking on her in addition to her OB appointments and hospital rotations and everyday studying, her voice growing more hysterical every day from the tension that she’ll never acknowledge, Carrie doesn’t want to extend that same burden to Isaac.

But he found her meds and he’s standing in front of her asking about them, so she has to tell him something, and she has to be honest. She takes a deep breath to fortify herself.

“So my dad was diagnosed with bipolar disorder before I was born, and for my entire life, I’ve watched him try to manage it,” Carrie starts. She feels the need to establish that her condition is inherited, that it isn’t somehow her fault. 

Isaac nods slowly, and his face softens with the comprehension she’s now used to seeing when acquaintances find out that her dad is bipolar. He’s probably reviewing all the stories Carrie’s told him about her father and seeing everything fall into place. 

“A lot of things about my dad suddenly make sense, right?” Carrie smirks slightly. “Maggie and I knew from the time we were pretty young that his illness could be genetic, and she was always watching me for symptoms that could echo our dad’s.”

“Did you watch her too?”

“Sometimes, but there was no need, really. She’s been level-headed her entire life.” 

“I wish I knew this about you,” Isaac says quietly. “That’s a lot to deal with as a teenager.” 

“Well, family mental illnesses aren’t something you usually bring up with your boyfriend of four months. And I think my dad prefers that I don’t go around shouting about it.” 

“I understand.” 

“The short version of what happened is that I had what’s called a manic episode last month, during finals week.” She likes how clean the clinical term sounds, so easily definable, so detached, like she’s saying she had a cold last month. 

“I can’t believe I didn’t notice.” Isaac looks genuinely upset, and the pity on his face is worse than any mean or uncaring thing he could have said. 

“Don’t worry about it,” she jumps to reassure him. “We both had so much to do, and I always lose track of people during finals. There’s no way you could have known.” She’s trying to regain just a shred of her agency. She fills him in on the rest, her feverish terrorist timeline, Maggie bringing her to the hospital, and her evaluation and diagnosis, though she’s light on the timeline of it all, trying to avoid an _oh God, my girlfriend was confined to a psych ward_ freakout.

“So when you said you were with Maggie’s husband’s family for Christmas… was that true?” Isaac asks.

Carrie can’t bring herself to admit that she lied; it’s easier to go along with his version of events, and she doesn’t want to give him a reason to stop trusting her. Even though he’d be right to do so. 

“Yes! That was true, I swear. I had to sit through dinner next to Bill’s dad,” she invents wildly, “who I think must have the most boring finance job in the world. Something to do with bonds. I’m still not sure what he does, even though he talked to me about it all night.” 

Isaac laughs at her fake story, relief evident on his face. She did him a favor. “That sounds terrible.”

“My doctor gave me those pills you found to take on occasion, as a precaution. I don’t need them every day, so like I said earlier, it isn’t that important.” 

“It sounds important to me,” Isaac interjects. Again with the pity. His mood starts to shift as he absorbs everything she’s just told him. “Fuck, Carrie. This is really serious, isn’t it?” 

She shrugs, too cavalier, a misguided attempt to lighten the air. Isaac’s face falls. 

“It’s serious in that I have to watch myself and be careful to stick to a routine and take medication when the doctors tell me to,” she says, sounding much calmer than she feels. She knows the drill from growing up with her dad, though that doesn’t mean she’ll be successful at any of these things. “It’s not so serious that you have to worry about me. I’m the same person I’ve always been. I promise.” 

She’d mostly hated the alternately patronizing and uncaring psych resident she was assigned while she was in the hospital, but she did appreciate when he told her that her diagnosis hadn’t changed her; it simply gave a name to patterns she’d been living with her whole life. 

This seems to help Isaac breathe easier too. 

“Is there anything else I should know?” he asks. 

“Like what?”

“I don’t know. Signs of a manic episode, I guess. Or depression. Do I need to worry about that?”

Carrie knows she’s supposed to be happy that he’s being supportive, but she just feels scared — that she’ll let him down, that he’ll decide she’s not worth it. If he’s going to run away, five months ahead of schedule, she wants him to do it right now, not lull her into a false sense of security. She doesn’t need to be a weight on his shoulders, and if anyone else starts insisting she needs hand-holding to complete basic tasks she’s going to scream. 

“No. Please don’t. I have a doctor in Virginia who takes care of that.” She doesn’t want to say _psychiatrist_ out loud.

“Do you have a doctor here? Should you have a doctor here?” He’s getting agitated, brow wrinkling as he presumably runs through worst-case scenarios in his head. He’s agitated, and it’s her fault.

“I’m just taking everything a step at a time.” She tries to calm him with reason. “I’m only here for another semester. I think I’ll be fine.”

Isaac opens his mouth to respond — he doesn’t believe her, and why would he? — but thinks better of it. 

“It’s all going to be fine,” Carrie repeats, though she doesn’t really believe it herself, standing up to kiss him so they can stop talking about it, so she can stop searching for answers and confidence she doesn’t have.

Over the next few weeks, she does her best to follow the doctor’s orders, digs out her sneakers and warm gloves and goes running almost every day, despite the winter wind. She runs mile repeats on the outdoor track, the rhythm of the four laps soothing as she reminds herself to breathe, in and out, in and out, sprinting the last 200 meters close to collapsing, pushing herself to run just twenty seconds better each time.

Isaac tries to be supportive, but his version of supportive is to smother her, with phone calls and her favorite desserts and an alarm that chirps at 9:45pm, signaling that she should be asleep in fifteen minutes. He says the alarm is just a reminder, so she can go to bed if she wants, but she feels like it’s scolding her every time she stays over at his apartment. She’s always awake until at least midnight, distracted by schoolwork and the news and Maggie’s pregnancy updates. She starts sleeping at his place less often, missing the warm happiness she always felt upon waking up in his bed, but feeling more like her old self, who didn’t have to answer to anyone.

One night, as she tries to leave for her dorm, Isaac stops her, a determined look on his face.

“Can’t you stay over? You never do anymore,” he tries to persuade her.

Carrie sighs heavily, in the middle of putting on her coat, frustrated by the guilt trip. She places it back on the hook. “Maybe there’s a reason why I don’t sleep over here anymore,” she says, more angrily than she’d intended. 

“And what reason is that?” 

“You arrange your entire night around me, cooking me a perfect dinner, making sure I get enough sleep, trying to minimize every possible conflict so that nothing goes wrong.”

“I’m not —” He’s at a loss. “I’m just trying to be considerate. I didn’t think that would be a bad thing.”

“I don’t need you to put my feelings first all the time. And you don’t have to worry about mania every single time I get excited about something.” 

“I don’t think that!”

“Yes, you do, I can see it in your face. You were scared the other night when I was yelling at the TV during the Heat game.” 

Isaac nods seriously. “Okay, I’ll try harder to control it.”

“That’s the whole point! You shouldn’t be working harder.”

“Well, what should I do then? I don’t know what you’re looking for.” 

“I want you to do less. I want our relationship to go back to normal, where we’re both getting something out of it. Right now, you’re just caring for me, and it’s too much.” 

“Would you prefer it if I just ignored your diagnosis altogether?” he asks desperately.

“Yes! That’s exactly what I want.”

“That doesn’t sound like a good idea.”

“What I definitely _don’t_ want is you telling me how to manage my illness,” she snaps. 

Isaac throws up his hands in surrender. 

“I should never have told you I was diagnosed,” she says quietly, half to herself. 

“You only told me in the first place because I found your meds,” he reminds her. “If I hadn’t, would you have kept quiet about it altogether?”

“I don’t know. I did plan on telling you eventually.”

“Eventually is a conveniently vague point in time, Carrie.” 

She shrugs in response, and his eyes narrow at her. “So you wish you hadn’t said anything, and we continued our relationship the way it was?” 

“I guess so.” 

“Do you have any idea how fucked up that sounds? People in relationships are honest with each other. Normal people are honest with each other.” 

“Well, unfortunately, I’m not a normal person! I have a mental illness, remember?” Carrie almost laughs in his face.

“That’s not what I meant, and you know it.” He’s not apologetic. “I thought I knew you so well.”

“You do know me!” 

“I’m not sure about that anymore. I’m finding out about a whole other side of you. You’re secretive and angry and you hoard resentments.” 

She gasps a little, a tiny intake of hurt. “And how, exactly, should I be reacting to my diagnosis? What’s the right way to _process?”_ She borrows his infuriating word.

“I just meant —”

She steamrolls right past him. “Anyway, who cares if we have a perfect honest relationship? You’re moving away after graduation. We have a clear expiration date.” 

He stops pacing the living room carpet, genuine shock on his face. “So, what, you’re just counting down the days until I leave the country?” 

“No, of course not.”

“What did you mean, then?”

“Just that it doesn’t make any sense to waste time presenting a flawless relationship to the world.”

“Is that why you didn’t want me to meet Maggie? Because you didn’t think I mattered enough?”

“What the fuck?” Carrie asks, her heart hammering in her chest. “You’re twisting my words. And you did meet Maggie.” 

“Barely, and you were under extreme duress the entire time.” 

“That’s not true.” She buries her head in her hands and takes a deep breath. “How did we even get here?”

“You were telling me that I care too much about your mental illness.” 

She sighs in frustration. “That’s not what I said. I just want you to leave me alone.” 

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Isaac’s voice is shaky. 

“Maybe we should take some time apart.”

“What?”

“Real time, not just a night or two.” She didn’t plan to ask for space like this, but as soon as the words leave her mouth she feels her shoulders relax a little bit.

“I don’t think we should break up,” he pleads desperately.

“Don’t worry, I won’t go around telling people you dumped me because I’m bipolar.”

“Why would you even joke about that?”

“Sorry,” she apologizes, and she does feel bad about it. But she also knows it’s the right thing for her in this moment, to unburden herself of her boyfriend who cares for her too much, who is suffocating her with his concern, which is so great as to be counterproductive. 

“Sorry for the bad joke, or for wanting to break up?”

“Both, I guess,” she says quietly. “But this is what I need right now.” 

“You were trying to leave earlier. Were you just going to go home and disappear completely?”

“No, I would never do that,” she assures him. “I swear.” 

“Well, that’s something, at least.” Isaac doesn’t sound convinced.

They stare at each other across his small living room. 

“What do we do next?” he asks. 

“We say goodbye,” she says, her voice thick with tears. She tries to hold them back so he doesn’t think she’s changing her mind. 

It’s snowing when Carrie finally leaves Isaac’s apartment, and she cries as she walks the twenty minutes back to her dorm, but as she watches the snow pile up in fresh drifts she feels lighter, cleansed, almost. She can hear the psych resident from the hospital in her ear, asking about her support system, but she shakes her head to clear it; he doesn’t know anything about her. She’s no longer a burden, a liability, a helpless girlfriend to fix. She’s been alone almost her entire life, and she’s good at it. She can prove it, and she will.


End file.
